


Five Times Laurent Had His Wish Granted (and One Time Damen Did)

by Just_Another_Day



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Be Careful What You Wish For, Fluffy Ending, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Laurent Doesn't Know What the Hell He Really Wants, M/M, POV Laurent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 20:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9287669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Just_Another_Day/pseuds/Just_Another_Day
Summary: Laurent doesn't take wishes seriously. That won't always stop them from coming true.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Each 5+1 section ultimately stands alone. They range from starting just weeks post-Battle of Marlas to a couple of years post-Kings Rising. **IMPORTANT NOTE:** Most of these sections are really angsty. Really. Please skip through to the end notes if this might concern you and you want a spoilery trigger warning. Any other applicable warnings are canon-typical (violence, language, briefly implied past abuse).

**1.**

"I wish I'd been the one to die at Marlas," Laurent whispered dejectedly into his empty room, before finally giving in to the exhaustion that came from long hours spent wringing tears from his body. 

When he awoke sometime later, he felt some regret for his words. Auguste wouldn't have wanted him to think that way. And even if that very thought had been eating him alive since he'd been dragged away from the site of Vere's defeat on the battlefield, still screaming Auguste's name, it still should never have actually been voiced aloud. He was a _prince_ , after all, and now was destined to be King one day. He had to at least appear strong, if nothing else. 

Thankfully, it wasn't like anyone had been nearby to overhear his weak admission.

In fact, no one had been paying much attention to him at all in the weeks since his arrival back in Arles, except to very occasionally pretend at sympathy in a ploy to make themselves look and feel better. Laurent might as well have been invisible as well as powerless and alone. He'd felt like a spectre roaming the halls.

Perhaps that was why it took him so long to realise anything had changed.

To Laurent's credit, it certainly wasn't obvious at first. If anything, the halls were even more respectfully hushed than he'd been slowly growing used to. The black tapestries were hanging just the way they should be in deference to two royal deaths. And, as per usual, no one paid any attention to Laurent.

It was only when Auguste's name passed Laurent's lips in a strangled cry and no one looked up, not even his brother, that Laurent realised something was wrong. His brother being alive and well, if very obviously saddened, was not in itself wrong, of course. As far as Laurent was concerned, there was nothing in the world that could be more _right_ than that. But Auguste had never in his life completely ignored Laurent, and certainly not when Laurent let out a desperate yell that should have spurred his protective older brother immediately into action. For some reason, Auguste wouldn't look at him, no matter what Laurent did to try to grab his attention. 

The kicker was how his hand passed straight through his brother's shoulder when he tried to shake him impatiently. Laurent looked down at his own hand, which looked solid enough to his own eyes. He tried to knock over Auguste's cup, which his brother was uncharacteristically deep into, if his red-rimmed eyes were anything to go by. Nothing. Laurent might as well not even be there. 

"I imagined it," Laurent realised. "I was the one who died after all, and these past few weeks have been some kind of last fevered dream before death."

He wasn't sad about that, except insofar as it meant he had to look Auguste in the face and see that he appeared just as crushed to have lost Laurent as Laurent had been when he'd imagined Auguste had been the one who died. Perhaps it was even worse for him, Laurent decided. Laurent had _felt_ guilty for Auguste's death, but truthfully he'd known deep down there was nothing he could have done to save him. He'd been more than halfway across the battlefield, after all, and even if he'd been right there, well, if Damianos was good enough to defeat Auguste, he would have been able to slice Laurent down in a single stroke. 

When Auguste visited Laurent's grave and begged into the air for forgiveness, though, Laurent could see that he blamed himself with no misgivings. 

"I don't care," Laurent assured him, wishing Auguste could hear. "It doesn't matter if I'm dead, as long as you live. I couldn't _stand_ it, but I know you're so much stronger than me. You'll be fine eventually."

Laurent wished that were the case. Oh how he wished.

But wishes didn't always come true.

When Auguste didn't recover quickly enough (or at all, Laurent admitted to himself), their uncle apparently saw an opportunity.

Laurent screamed Auguste's name, a mixture of warning and shock and sadness that echoed his imagined scream on that battlefield, and it made just as little difference as it would have then.

He punched and kicked at the guards that had fallen upon Auguste, and then he clawed at his uncle's throat as he announced with fabricated grief that the Crown Prince had been unable to handle the grief and had chosen to follow his beloved father and brother into death. Sadly, Laurent's fingers didn't make the slightest dent.

"Laurent," Auguste greeted him sadly, able to see him at last, "it's okay now. You can stop." Their hands, when they reached for each other, almost felt as if they met before passing through each other.

Laurent wasn't quite sure if this was better or worse. At least, he supposed, they were together again now.

But it definitely wasn't what he would have wished for, given the choice.

**2.**

"I wish I'd killed my uncle before he could lay a hand on me," Laurent muttered bitterly in lieu of crying himself to sleep. He was too strong to give in to that urge, he swore to himself. He'd made it through Auguste's death without collapsing, even if he'd found himself reaching out to his uncle for help in a weak moment (a mistake, he now knew). If he could survive that, then he could certainly make it through this without breaking down as well.

When he woke up, Laurent immediately recoiled. 

This wasn't Arles. That was immediately obvious. It certainly wasn't his bedroom, where he'd fallen asleep.

In fact, if Laurent was forced to guess, he'd say that the heat in the air and the look of the furnishings pointed to this not being any part of Vere at all. 

"Your Highness," greeted a man dressed nondescriptly. He held himself like a guard or a soldier, but he didn't wear Laurent's sigil.

"Who are you?" Laurent demanded.

"Jord," the man answered in the long-suffering tone of a man who'd definitely answered that question before but didn't really expect his name to be actually remembered by a prince. 

Unfortunately, a name alone didn't tell Laurent much of anything about where on earth he was, who he was with, or why he'd woken up countless miles from where he'd fallen asleep. How long had he been out? Had he been drugged or something?

"I'm sorry for bringing this to you, but you should know that the men are getting more and more restless the further into Akielos we ride."

That was spoken like a soldier, definitely. And if they were riding into Akielos for some stealth mission, that would explain the lack of identifying marks. 

It didn't really explain Laurent's apparent memory loss, but that concerned him less and less by the second, because it was suddenly occurring to him that they were in _Akielos_. Home of his brother's killer. If he was leading this mission, then Laurent didn't doubt for a moment what they must have been doing there. He'd sworn to avenge Auguste's death, and even if he'd thought he'd be older and better-trained before he made that attempt, he still wasn't about to turn down the opportunity now that it was presenting itself.

"We could still turn back and make for Patras," Jord suggested hesitantly. "You know they expressed a willingness to house you for as long as your exile should last. Their King seemed to believe that you must have had a very good reason for killing your uncle, and that your return to Vere would therefore be prompt. Once the truth is revealed," Jord added pointedly, his eyebrows raised in question.

Laurent stared at Jord, gobsmacked. _What_? A good reason for… no really, what?

Well, it seemed this was a day for getting the things that he wanted most. First a chance to avenge his brother, and now his snake of an uncle dead as well, apparently at Laurent's hands, even if he had no memory of the satisfaction of actually doing it. He supposed it wouldn't do to question such luck too much.

"No," Laurent decreed. "We'll push on. We have unfinished business in Akielos."

Jord seemed unsurprised, if saddened, by this news. "Your men are all with you to whatever end," he assured his prince, sounding like he was already certain of exactly what that end would be.

Jord, as it would turn out, might have had some seer's blood in him. Not that the outcome was, in retrospect, difficult to foresee.

It was two weeks later that Laurent's party, entirely by chance (if such things were truly left to anything other than fate), stumbled across a royal Akielon retinue on the road to Ios. 

The moment Laurent caught sight of what could only be the Crown Prince, he couldn't stop himself. His need for vengeance was the sole thing driving him at this stage, leaving no room for caution or common sense. He saw Damianos, the Prince-killer, and he couldn't _think_.

The Akielon soldiers were so stunned by the raging bull of a fourteen-year-old boy suddenly sprinting into their midst that they didn't even immediately raise their swords or spears against him. The same, unluckily, could not be said for Damianos, who was apparently too well-trained to be taken off-guard. Well, Laurent supposed, he would _have_ to have been an exceptional warrior to have killed Auguste. 

"Stop," Damianos ordered as Laurent hacked at him and was deflected with ease again and again. "Stop that, please. I don't want to hurt you. I have no quarrel with you, boy."

"Too bad," Laurent spat, "because I owe you a debt."

Damianos, Laurent could tell, would have preferred to disarm and detain him, and probably would have treated him like a recalcitrant child all the while instead of acknowledging him as a proper enemy. But Laurent was too consumed by rage to let that be how this ended. He threw himself bodily at the Akielon prince when Damianos seemed to be expecting him to retreat. 

The look of shock on Damianos' face was sweeter than he expected.

It was a pity, then, that the shock was for Laurent's sake, not his own. 

The sword didn't hurt when it sank in. Not at first. Damianos unthinkingly yanked his sword back, as if he could undo the last few moments if only he backtracked quickly enough. He was an experienced fighter, and Laurent knew only too well that he'd certainly killed before; he ought to have known better. Removing the weapon at this point would only hasten the inevitable.

"Why would you do this?" Damianos asked as Laurent pressed his fingers to the growing spread of wetness on his own chest, staring curiously at the red of the blood.

"My name is Prince Laurent of Vere," Laurent said, as if that explained everything.

"Oh," was all Damianos said, and stupid oaf though he might be, clearly it did.

"I'm sorry," Damianos added, sounding surprisingly honest. "Despite what I'm sure my father would advise about dealing with foreign princes who bear me a grudge, I would have preferred to have sent you back home safely, even if it meant we'd meet in battle in a few years. I wish you hadn't forced my hand."

"Fuck you," were Laurent's last words.

Damianos of Akielos, a Prince-killer twice over now, held Laurent's body as he drifted away. It was strangely comforting.

**3.**

"I only wish my man had succeeded in killing the slave. The cost of the wager would have been more than worth it."

When he woke up and found that Damianos of Akielos had apparently died of his wounds after all, and was today being buried as a nameless slave, he tried to feel happy. 

All he really felt was that he'd been somehow robbed. 

Especially when his uncle took the opportunity to move against him and the Council, aghast with his show of savagery and lack of remorse towards what they viewed as an innocent slave, failed to take Laurent's side.

And Laurent would never know it, but when there was no one to watch his back and plan with him on the road to the border, he had no one to blame for the results but himself.

Laurent of Vere was the last of his company to fall, and in his last moments he thought that that was as it should be. 

It meant that he died alone, just as he'd known he would ever since Auguste had been taken from him far too soon.

**4.**

"I wish you were anyone else," Laurent sighed aloud. Feeling these things was hard enough without them being directed at his brother's killer. Of course, Damen still somehow remained unaware that Laurent knew his real identity, so he could hardly explain what he meant.

Luckily for him, Damen didn't question the statement at all. Laurent assumed that he probably felt the same way. Laurent knew he couldn't be an easy man to care for, after all, and he'd done his best to give Damen reasons not to feel anything but loathing for him. Damen would have done better to have been made the slave of just about anyone else in Vere.

He awoke slowly with his head rested on a broad chest and, caught in a barely-conscious moment, found himself smiling slightly. That smile fell away painfully fast as soon as he recognised that the man he was in bed with wasn't Damen, but some slave he'd never seen before in his life.

"What have you done with him?" Laurent demanded, shoving the stranger away viciously.

"Your Highness?" the slave asked, confused, sounding for all the world like he had no idea what Laurent could possibly be asking about. It didn't help things that he also looked as though he believed he had every right to be there and that Laurent was the crazy one for not just accepting waking to a stranger in his bed.

"Guards!" Laurent ordered while he dressed (and felt sick at the fact that he had been completely undressed with this man and couldn't account for what might have happened during the night). 

Orlant, whom Laurent would have prior to that exact moment sworn up and down had been dead for weeks, was the first to charge past the wooden door. 

Laurent stared at him, barely even noticing as other soldiers and guards appeared in and around the small enclosure of the guest room. Orlant had proved himself a traitor, hadn't he? Perhaps his supposed death had been a ruse so that he could take Laurent and Damen off guard now. But Laurent had seen his body with his own eyes. And, even stranger, not a single one of Laurent's other soldiers, not even Jord, who was one of the most loyal people Laurent had ever met, reacted in shock or negativity to seeing Orlant in their ranks.

"What is going on here?" Laurent breathed, directed at no one in particular. Had the world gone completely mad while he was sleeping? Had _he_?

Either of those options were looking progressively more likely as the question of, "Where is my slave?" only earned pointed looks at the man now cowering in the corner, and a more explicit, "Where's Damen?" achieved only blank looks that appeared too genuine to be some kind of front for the truth. Most of his men weren't good enough liars for that.

"It's nothing," Laurent finally said. "Everything's fine. I'm obviously just tired. Take that slave away from here, though."

His men seemed largely unwilling to quite buy into the suddenness of their dismissal, but they had little choice but to let their Prince order them away.

In the following weeks, no amount of questioning nor messengers sent across borders could retrieve any information about the missing man except the repeated claims of, "He's been dead for weeks," that might have been expected from anyone who wasn't aware that Prince Damianos of Akielos and Damen the slave were one and the same.

Had these memories all been the result of some break with reality on the occasion of Laurent hearing that Damianos had died at hands other than his own? Laurent couldn't believe it, for even if his imagination was this keen, surely he'd never in a million lifetimes dreamt of wanting his brother's killer to fuck him, let alone developing feelings other than hatred for the man. 

It had to be the case, though, because there was absolutely no evidence that Damen had ever really been a part of his life. 

In the end, it didn't matter how or why he'd imagined this particular scenario so vividly; the only things that were relevant were that it felt far more tangible than any dream, and that he couldn't get back to that reality, conjured or otherwise. 

Laurent's chest ached with the loss, even if it wasn't real.

He wished he'd never known what he might have been missing out on.

**5.**

"I wish Auguste had lived."

While it was true that the words of Kings could have a significant impact on the world, Laurent didn't expect these ones to make any more difference than the hundreds of other times he'd thought that exact same sentence in the privacy of his own mind. Only delusional idiots put any stock in the power of wishes. In other words, it was the sort of hare-brained thing a dreamer like Damen would be likely to believe in, not Laurent.

But that long-held wish had automatically slipped out when Damen had asked, days before Laurent's birthday, "Isn't there one thing you desire above all others?" He hadn't meant the words to be a hurtful dig at Damen. They'd discussed this topic before, after all, and even found some measure peace between them with respect to it. But despite that, his answer was still the truth, and Damen deserved that much from him.

Damen had no response, which Laurent expected. It wasn't like Damen could do anything to change the past, traditional Akielon birthday wish or no.

Quiet spanned between them, then, but when Damen reached for his hand, Laurent didn't resist as Damen pressed an apologetic kiss to his knuckles. The atmosphere as they fell asleep together was surprisingly comfortable in the wake of Laurent's confession.

When he woke, Damen was already missing from their room. He'd probably gone to spar with the guards. Laurent should probably join them one of these days. There might be peace between Vere and Akielos, but it still wouldn't do to let his hard-won skills fall by the wayside. He and Damen both knew better than anyone that an attack could come from unexpected quarters.

It would be nice if they didn't start training so damn _early_ , though.

But he didn't find Damen training, nor at breakfast. What he _did_ find at the breakfast table nearly made him topple over in shock.

"I'm asleep," he told himself. That was all right, he decided. At least it was a good dream.

"Laurent," Auguste greeted him jovially, "we were just talking about your penchant for sleeping in. Were you up late reading again last night?"

"Auguste," Laurent choked out. "You're…" 

Alive. 

It was hard to be sure, since Laurent never really remembered his dreams, but he thought this was possibly the best dream he'd ever had. Just spending the day talking to his brother as adults was as perfect as anything he could imagine. Laurent knew it wasn't real, but he let that thought sink to the back of his mind until it was late evening and the knowledge that the dream would likely come to an end soon started looming over him.

Laurent hadn't known until he'd fallen for Damen that happiness could cause his chest to swell and hurt just as much as grief. This current pain, he decided, was due to a mixture of those two emotions, for the joy of seeing Auguste here, looking older than he'd ever been able to grow and wearing the garb of King just as he'd been destined to was only barely outweighed by the knowledge that, when Laurent woke up, Auguste would still be gone.

Knowing that, there was no point clinging to the dream. 

Laurent pinched the tender skin inside his elbow, hard, hoping to wake himself up. Nothing happened, except that it hurt quite a bit.

All right, Laurent decided, perhaps that was a fishwives' tale. It wasn't as if he'd personally ever remembered his dreams well enough to know whether he'd tried that before. Unfortunately, he didn't know how else to wake himself up. 

He'd just have to let the dream come to its natural conclusion.

"Well," Auguste said the following morning when Laurent was still there in the dream. "Are you going to sit down and eat or not? The cooks sent up your favourite this morning, and you're letting it get cold."

Was there any point in eating in a dream? He hadn't done so the previous day. Why bother when Laurent couldn't imagine that dream food tasted of anything other than air? But when he directed his spoon into his mouth automatically after the plate was placed before him, he had to admit that the taste and texture were strikingly realistic.

Laurent hadn't realised that he had such a good imagination. Damen had certainly always joked that he was as pragmatic as they came, and it was lucky he had Damen to dream big enough for both of them.

This dream felt plenty big. Too big. So much that it stopped feeling like a dream once Laurent had coasted through three straight days, each morning waking up and stretching out a hand for Damen only to discover yet again that not only was he alone, but Damen wasn't in Arles at all, because of course if Auguste was King, obviously the treaty had never been struck between their (now dead, thank mercy) uncle and Kastor. 

It hadn't seemed so pressing that Damen was temporarily absent when Laurent had still been utterly certain this wasn't reality and that he'd wake up to Damen in his bed at any moment. Now, though, he was really starting to miss him. Apparently he was going to have to stop sitting around and waiting to wake up and start taking steps to remedy Damen's absence. Even if this _was_ still just a dream, Laurent had no intention of dreaming his way through potentially weeks or months without Damen by his side.

For that matter, nor did he want to spend the rest of this dream (or reality) with Auguste looking at him sideways because Laurent was acting strangely and had no knowledge of events he was clearly supposed to have lived through.

Laurent brought up the topic hesitantly.

"I remember things being so different. I think I _wished_ for it to change, somehow," Laurent confessed to Auguste on the fourth day. "I thought I was dreaming, but… Honestly, I don't know what to believe now. You probably won't believe me when I explain it all. Hell, not even Damen would believe this, and he's about as gullible as they come."

"Damen?" Auguste echoed blankly.

"Damianos," Laurent amended, because of course Auguste would have no reason to know of Damen's small name. Not yet, at least. He would be meeting the man on friendly terms soon enough, if Laurent got his way.

Laurent was actually kind of looking forward to the opportunity to make Damen fall in love with him all over again, this time without Laurent's early abuse and manipulation shadowing their past, at least from Damen's perspective. Even if it turned out he was still just dreaming after all, it certainly couldn't hurt to play out the courtship Damen had once outlined for them. It would be a nice story to tell Damen, assuming he remembered the dream.

" _Prince_ Damianos? Of Akielos?" Auguste finally asked, somehow sounding more uncertain than Laurent ever recalled hearing him. "Well that's a name I haven't heard in a while."

"How goes our relationship with Akielos, then?" Laurent asked, already mentally planning out a diplomatic mission in which he turned Damen's head and had the man desperate to follow him back to Vere.

Auguste's frown deepened. "It's rather irreconcilable since I felled their prince on the battlefield, as you well know. Why this sudden interest in what happened to Prince Damianos, anyway? You never cared before except to congratulate me on my victory."

"You…" Laurent started saying, then couldn't force the rest of the words past his throat. Saying it aloud would mean processing it. He couldn't. He _couldn't_.

He sank to his knees, his extremities suddenly feeling too disconnected from himself to support him.

He was such a fool. Auguste was alive. Alive, when it had only been his untimely stumble and resulting death that had ended the fight between himself and an already-injured Damen.

"No," Laurent breathed.

Even if this reality existed due to some stray wish of Laurent's, it certainly wasn't what he'd wanted. This somehow hadn't even occurred to him as a possibility. When he'd thought of August alive and well, Laurent had always pictured Damen laying down arms and asking for a parley, not the fight continuing on long past the time when it should have ended. Not Auguste rallying after his stumble, and taking advantage of Damen's newly-weak wounded shoulder.

He hadn't wanted Damen to be... 

No.

"He's all I have," Laurent said, for once in his life barely taking any notice of Auguste, whose presence didn't even seem real.

He wanted to take it back. To reverse this, even if that meant Auguste being gone again. He would do _anything_.

"Laurent, tell me what's wrong and I'll fix it for you," Auguste promised, just like he always had when Laurent had been younger.

But he couldn't make it better this time. This wasn't just a matter of a bandage and a kiss to the forehead when Laurent took a tumble from his pony. Some things couldn't be so easily healed.

Auguste sank to his knees so that he could be face-to-face with Laurent, not a king in this moment, but merely as a concerned older brother, trying to comfort him despite not understanding the first thing about what was wrong. It didn't matter, Laurent knew. It didn't matter that Auguste was finally able to hold him the way Laurent had desperately wanted him to for years. These were the wrong arms around him.

"I'm sorry. Please," Laurent said. "I wish I'd never asked for this. I wish I could just _wake up_."

The only thing those wishes accomplished was that Auguste, perplexed, held him tighter.

**+1.**

"Come on. It's an Akielon tradition on birthdays," Damen coaxed.

"I don't believe in wishes anyway," Laurent admitted. "Why? What would _you_ wish for?"

"My one wish would be that you could be perfectly happy," Damen said sincerely, "even if it meant we'd never crossed paths."

Laurent snorted and tucked his head under Damen's chin and kissed his bare collarbone.

"Idiot. I already am," Laurent replied before drifting off to sleep.

And when they woke up tangled together, absolutely nothing had changed.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: This contains major character deaths, and a lot of them, both on-screen and off. That includes pretty much all of the main characters, in some cases more than once each. Sorry. If you don't want to see these guys die, please steer well clear of this fic. Except for the plus one at the end, if you like. That part's definitely safe to read, unless you can't stand a soppy ending.


End file.
